Although I must say, I didn't see this movie but it did look like an Alien rip off.

I'm guessing a lot of people thought the same. Here's an article briefly looking at a few of its "predecessors". It's not too interesting, though this line - "All of the above were produced by film-makers on the margins of Hollywood, at a time when Rotten Tomatoes did not exist and video store shelves were overloaded with low-rent, copycat sci-fi and fantasy trash." makes for an interesting counterpoint against both Danny's RT-decrying Twitter pals and Diego's "decline of sci-fi" theses.

Nowadays when I read Brendan's writing, I think of movies like ET or Lilo & Stitch where the alien creature befriends some human kids and learns rudimentary English. Typically there's some kind of recurring line ("broken but still good" or "phone home"). In Brendan's case, it's "short of." In the end, the alien sacrifices himself and repeats some line from the beginning of the movie in a big emotional climax.

Can't you just picture Brendan the Extraterrestrial stepping back into his spaceship and saying "Nothing above special, and nothing just good" before lifting off?

Brendan fixed the link. Best part is probably "Snyder has problem with pacing when he will quickly going through some parts that need to be explained better and slows it down at other parts that don't need fleshing out."